|
The Circuit does not go by chance but under the
Reason-Principle of the living whole; therefore there must be a
harmony between cause and caused; there must be some order
ranging things to each other's purpose, or in due relation to
each other: every several configuration within the Circuit must
be accompanied by a change in the position and condition of
things subordinate to it, which thus by their varied rhythmic
movement make up one total dance-play.
In our dance-plays there are outside elements contributing to the
total effect- fluting, singing, and other linked accessories- and
each of these changes in each new movement: there is no need to
dwell on these; their significance is obvious. But besides this
there is the fact that the limbs of the dancer cannot possibly
keep the same positions in every figure; they adapt themselves to
the plan, bending as it dictates, one lowered, another raised,
one active, another resting as the set pattern changes. The
dancer's mind is on his own purpose; his limbs are submissive to
the dance-movement which they accomplish to the end, so that the
connoisseur can explain that this or that figure is the motive
for the lifting, bending, concealment, effacing, of the various
members of the body; and in all this the executant does not
choose the particular motions for their own sake; the whole play
of the entire person dictates the necessary position to each limb
and member as it serves to the plan.
Now this is the mode in which the heavenly beings [the diviner
members of the All] must be held to be causes wherever they have
any action, and, when. they do not act, to indicate.
Or, a better statement: the entire kosmos puts its entire life
into act, moving its major members with its own action and
unceasingly setting them in new positions; by the relations thus
established, of these members to each other and to the whole, and
by the different figures they make together, the minor members in
turn are brought under the system as in the movements of some one
living being, so that they vary according to the relations,
positions, configurations: the beings thus co-ordinated are not
the causes; the cause is the coordinating All; at the same time
it is not to be thought of as seeking to do one thing and
actually doing another, for there is nothing external to it since
it is the cause by actually being all: on the one side the
configurations, on the other the inevitable effects of those
configurations upon a living being moving as a unit and, again,
upon a living being [an All] thus by its nature conjoined and
concomitant and, of necessity, at once subject and object to its
own activities.
|
|